The North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR) is one of the most popular heritage railways in Britain. Since 1973 it has transported hundreds of thousands of visitors in preserved steam and diesel-hauled trains between Pickering and Grosmont through an ancient landscape of unmatched beauty. When those trains started to run regularly to and from Whitby in 2007, it revived a service started back in 1836 by the Whitby & Pickering Railway Company. This copiously illustrated book tells the story of a truly fascinating railway from its origins in the 1830s right through to the challenges, compromises and changing proprieties inherent in running a heritage line in the 21st century. AUTHOR: Michael Vanns was born in Newark-on-Trent in 1956. After studying history and history of art at Leicester University, and a short spell at Tamworth Castle Museum, Michael joined the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust in 1978. He remained there until 2009, working on a variety of projects starting with the Elton Collection which examined the Industrial Revolution through contemporary prints, drawings and books. He is the author of 'Witness to Change: A Record of the Industrial Revolution', an appreciation of the Elton Collection published in 2003. He was involved in museum education and in a number of large Heritage Lottery funded projects, including the refurbishment of the country's best preserved Victorian decorative tileworks, and the recreation of a small town Victorian street. For both these projects he was responsible for designing the displays and, in the case of the latter, the choice of buildings that were to be reconstructed. During his career he has also written and had published 13 books, all but two on railway subjects. These include a number of works on British railway signalling as well as 'The Railways of Newark-on-Trent' (Oakwood), 'Rail Centres: Nottingham' (Ian Allan) and 'Severn Valley Railway: a View from the Past' (Ian Allan).
